Why Perry reminds us of Mondale

It’s not the first time that a prior president will be part of the subsequent presidential debate. Indeed, in many ways, Bush has turned into the Republican Party’s Jimmy Carter.

When Carter left office in 1981, there was a great sigh of relief. After stagflation, the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviets marching into Afghanistan, the public was dying for a change. And four years later, when Reagan was running for reelection, the memories of the Carter years were still so pungent that Republicans gleefully brought up Carter every way they could.

Which gave the Democrats a terrible dilemma at the 1984 Democratic Convention: What do we do with Carter? Every second he was on television would remind voters of what was widely perceived to have been his failed presidency.

Of course, the Democrats had bigger worries, as they were about to nominate Walter Mondale, who had been Carter’s vice president. Republicans couldn’t believe their good fortune; now Democrats would be forced to defend the Carter record all the way to Election Day.

Republicans are already trying to figure out what to do with Bush next summer in Tampa. How do you claim to be the party of balanced budgets while cheering for Bush, who took a government surplus and left with red ink as far as the eye could see?

In the long run, the Bush presidency is probably not awful enough to linger as long as Herbert Hoover’s did. Hoover’s legacy was so powerfully negative, Democrats could bring him up on the campaign trail in 1968, and still win a few votes from geezers who remembered the Depression. By contrast, we won’t be talking much about Bush in 2016. But with Obama’s presidency hitting record lows in approval, Obama will be forced to bring up Bush and Cheney. After all, their approval numbers, three years out of office, are still lower than his.

So Republicans have to figure out how to keep Bush out of the public eye, while Democrats are going to use all means, fair and foul, to get Bush back into the news.